CICADA
SPECIES - ENVIRONMENT
News:
Commonly found cicada.
species sheds foreign tag to embrace Indian identity
What's
in the news?
● A
'foreign' cicada that is commonly found in several parts of South India has
assumed an Indian identity.
Key
takeaways:
● The
insect species that has now been named as Purana
cheeveeda (after its Malayalam name Cheeveedu) used to be mistaken for
Purana tigrina, a species that was first described in Malaysia in 1850.
● Due
to the differences in their morphological characteristics, the Association for
Advancement in Entomology has corrected the longstanding error in taxonomic
identification and has excluded the Malaysian species from the South Indian
cicada fauna.
Cicada:
● Cicadas
are hemipteran insects known for
their loud, complex and species-specific acoustic signals or songs.
● The
generic diversity of cicadas in India
and Bangladesh ranks the highest in the world, followed by China.
● Most
cicadas are canopy dwellers and are found in natural forests with large trees.
● P.
cheeveeda could extend across the tropical evergreen forests ranging from Goa
to Kanyakumari.
Types
of Cicada:
● Scientists
divide the over 3,000 cicada species into two groups: annual and periodical.
Annual
Cicadas:
● Annual
cicadas emerge from the ground at different times each summer.
● They’re
usually dark with greenish markings.
● These
insects avoid predators by camouflaging
themselves in the trees and flying from hungry birds and moles.
Periodical
Cicadas:
● Only
seven species of cicadas are in the periodical cicadas.
● These
bugs all emerge from the ground at the same time (Summer).
● These
groups appear after a dormant period of either 13 or 17 years.
Benefits
of Cicada:
● They
prune mature trees, aerate the soil,
and once they die, their bodies serve as an important source of nitrogen for
growing trees.